


Ex Ornamentis

by CorpseBrigadier



Series: Reliquiae [1]
Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Angst, First Time, Hate Sex, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Non-Penetrative Sex, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 16:08:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20410552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier
Summary: Wiegraf and Zalbag meet in Lesalia over a year after they encounter one another on the hills near Zeakden. The circumstances are not happy ones.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> **Note on Names:** I freely mix PSX and PSP names without remorse.
> 
> **Note on Content:** There is a brief, non-explicit mention of a coercive/non-consensual relationship in Chapter 3. This piece is also pretty heavy on institutional/internal religious homophobia, which I know this is never attributed to the fake JRPG Catholicism in the game.

_It didn't look as though it would be much of a fight. The last remaining rebels were scattered about the cliffs, their green cloaks standing out in patches amidst the snow. They went in suspecting an ambush, but Zalbag was unfazed as he watched the former Death Knights flee or fall with little contest or strategy. More than a half dozen had been picked off from a distance by archers. Some, evidently injured or ill, did not even rise to fight as they were slaughtered. The Hokuten pushed on through the rocky pass. This was necessary work, but the battle would never be numbered amongst the glories of the Northern Sky._

_"Necessary." It was a word that lingered. If he had been a man unaccustomed to calculating necessities, Zalbag might have lingered also on darker thoughts: of a long road back to an Igros missing one of its tenants. He kept his focus on the present, however, and it served him well when Wiegraf flew at him, dropping suddenly from what might as well have been the blank expanse of a winter sky._

_They had been expecting a different sort of ambush, and that miscalculation was entirely Zalbag's fault. What use was saving a handful of starving soldiers to a cornered fanatic? What could he gain from the death of a few Hokuten? Here as at Igros his plan remained the same: strike off the head. It was effective. The rest of the company already seemed thrown into a confusion for all the good they now did him. He had just barely managed to parry Wiegraf's initial lunge, and in the process he had been driven farther from the fray and nearer to the cliff's edge. It was inelegant, brutal, something that ought to have been predicted—of course it was effective._

_Wiegraf shouted something that was lost in the snow and continued to advance, fighting not quite desperately, but with the unmistakable recklessness of someone resigned to their own martyrdom. Neither landed a blow, but Zalbag continued to lose ground and the Hokuten continued to take their damned time looping back. Beat. Riposte. Counter riposte. Another thwarted advance. Another retreat. When there was no ground left him, Zalbag became reckless himself. Had Wiegraf been more cool-headed, he surely would have gored him on the next pass; instead he caught a swipe to his sword arm, stopping and stumbling as his blade clattered to the rocks below. Their eyes met in the midst of soldiers shouting, and before Zalbag could close in for the kill, the heavens burst into an outpouring of fire._

_The spiral of distant rockets bled into the sky, and both men mirrored one another's expression as they realized Zeakden was burning. Zalbag paused. Wiegraf did not. He leapt, catching the other man’s throat in his gloved hands as they both tumbled from the clifftop and into space, the glare of the conflagration illuminating them as they fell._

_There was a surety in that drawn and suspended moment, when Zalbag felt the weight of their approaching deaths. Red faded to black faded to burning white, and as the breath slipped from his lungs, he drifted into the mysteries of this personal Golgorand and could not find it fearful. All things moved as they ought. All deeds would be counted. No sparrow or saint fell without being reckoned._

_He floated in the stillness of that assurance, and let it fill him with a light hotter than flame and brighter than snow. When they hit the earth, when they lived, when they struggled and somehow separated—all of it was unasked for. He followed Wiegraf when he fled through the drifting smoke, but he did not marvel that the man should choose that night to put off dying._


	2. Chapter 2

Zalbag had just been told his mount was saddled and that his men were ready to ride east when a squire pushed his way into the office, stammering apologies to the tune that he had tried to convey the urgency of the situation and that he knew how little the general could afford any interruption. Before the boy could fully explain or finish, the appearance of two Temple Knights made any further clarification unnecessary. Zalbag raised a hand to quiet him.

The Templars did not wait for an invitation to enter. The thick wool of their cloaks—one red and one green—muffled the clatter of their armor. Neither removed their hood.

"Zalbag Beoulve," the knight in red began, "we need a word with you."

"My sincerest apologies, Templar," Zalbag said tersely, "I am needed at Dogoula and I cannot brook any further delay."

"I’m afraid the matter cannot wait."

"Is this matter of more weight than the security of the capital?" Zalbag replied, trying to remain as respectful as he could despite his obvious irritation. "We are at war."

"I would remind you, commander, that the Church has taken no side in the conflict. _You_ are at war." Wiegraf drew back his hood. "_We_ are here to discuss issues of heresy and the murder of clergy—crimes which I believe hold quite a bit of weight across all seven kingdoms, regardless of whether they hold Lesalia or are advancing upon it."

Upon seeing Wiegraf’s face, Zalbag took a deep breath, wondered if there were any other ghosts from Zeakden lurking about the palace to call on him today, and did his utmost to refrain from giving his interlocutor the satisfaction of seeing him rattled. He’d already lost his temper once that morning and it still smarted. He sat down slowly and turned to whomever the man in green was.

"Is the Church aware of this man’s past?" he asked coolly.

"Once one is becomes a Temple Knight, the Church holds that his past ceases to be," came the reply. "I am aware only that this man is my brother in God and my comrade in the Templarate."

"He’s right, you know… about my past," Wiegraf interjected, evidently annoyed at somebody speaking over him. "The Concordat of 1134 holds that Templars are only subject to prosecution for offences pre-dating their initiation if the Murond Tribunale pursues it."

Zalbag nodded, continuing rather purposefully to address Wiegraf’s associate rather than him.

"Forgive me, your companion wasn’t quite so versant in ecclesiastical law when last we met," he said in as withering a tone as he could manage. "As I am unlikely to have Gallione send petition to the High Confessor for his execution and see results in the span of one afternoon, however, I suppose I ought hear you out."

He turned to the squire and bade him send word as quickly as possible to the War Council that he was facing a delay, although he would endeavor to make it as brief as he could possibly manage.

"What is all this about heresy and murder?" he asked when the three of them were finally alone.

"You are not aware?" Wiegraf replied.

"I am not."

"Your brother, Ramza, stands accused of heresy following his role in the assassination of Cardinal Draclau and the theft of a holy relic from Lionel."

Zalbag continued to breath deeply, deliberately—trying to remain stoic in the face of the increasingly surreal chain of circumstances. Wiegraf, who had evidently taken notice of his attempts to ignore him in favor of his nearly silent companion, drew close, resting his hands on the table next to him as he sat down himself.

"He was seen a few hours ago entering these offices to speak with you."

A few hours. Zalbag closed his eyes a moment. Had fortune given him one more he might be eight or so leagues into the Grog hills where all he’d have to worry about was Orlandu running him through.

"Why is this the concern of the Temple Knights?" he asked after a while. "Shouldn’t Murond have sent an Examiner?"

Wiegraf smiled broadly. He looked as if he hadn’t done so for a long time.

"They did," he replied. "He was quite nearly killed attempting to question Ramza, who was then reported to have fled with his accomplices—your sister among them."

"My sister." Zalbag repeated.

"Yes," Wiegraf said softly, "your sister."

Silence followed, and the weight of so many unspoken things seemed to leave the air heavy as Wiegraf slid the documents affirming his claims onto the table. The man in green grew visibly uneasy as it became apparent precisely how little he understood of that persistent quiet, and he seemed relieved when Wiegraf finally waved him over.

"Why don’t you seek out the War Council yourself, Izlude? I think it mete that the Church have somebody to explain our position lest we encounter any interference."

The boy—for he was near enough for Zalbag to see now he was a boy—left them. He scanned the stack of documents Wiegraf had handed him, the words sounding in his brain without leaving any real impression other than that they appeared to have been genuinely produced by the office of Examiners.

Looking back at the man who watched over him, he wondered but briefly at what circumstances should have so altered his position—heaven knew the extent to which his own fortunes had reversed themselves in one day. He wondered more at how little Wiegraf himself seemed to have changed. It was as though the man had dropped from the sky again, stepped fresh from the Mandalian hills of a year prior and into his office. His rugged, gaunt features still burned the same intensity, and though he could not imagine that the interim of time had treated him kindly, he still bore himself with the self-assurance of a committed zealot.

"I imagine you must see why the Church is interested in speaking to you," said Wiegraf, taking notice that Zalbag now looked at him rather than at the writs in front of him. "For all that Murond recognizes your prior devotion, the situation hardly looks favorable."

"You want to know what I spoke of with my erstwhile brother then?" Zalbag asked, mentally replaying the family drama of that morning.

"Erstwhile?"

"We did not part on good terms." He paused, choosing his words carefully. They hadn’t even met on good terms: after all that happened, after all that was never addressed, the distance of time had left them strangers. "He is only partly my brother by blood, and he made it clear that he did not respect that tie."

"So," Wiegraf asked, "what was it you spoke of?"

Zalbag thought of the great many things they did not speak of—of Zeakden, of Ramza’s sudden flight from Igros, of his years of absence during which he roamed of countryside with some ignoble sellsword, of all the endless ways in which those who didn’t run from their duties had to confront where those duties led them. He had not been asked by Wiegraf to address the unspoken, however, and did his best to concisely recount their conversation—how Ramza had asked him to stop the war, how he had accused Dycedarg of arranging the princess’ abduction, and how he had been sent on his way with more charity than he deserved.

"Wait," Wiegraf said with obvious incredulity as he finished his tale, "are you saying you disowned him because he accused Lord Beoulve of orchestrating… a kidnapping?"

"Yes," Zalbag replied, growing angry at his obvious disdain. "Some are above such tactics, and I count those of my house is among them."

Wiegraf began to laugh, and Zalbag grew more and more unnerved as it became clear that it was not quite directed towards him. As he continued, it took on the bitter inflection of something almost like a sob.

"Do you have any more questions?" Zalbag asked impatiently.

"Plenty, general. Plenty, I assure you," Wiegraf said, trying to compose himself, "but… you are seriously telling me that back then… you didn’t know about Gustav?"

"Margueriff?" Zalbag asked in exasperation. "Know _what_ about him? He was a war criminal. He kidnapped a Marquis. He was one of _your_ soldiers."

"And you didn’t know who gave the command he kidnap Elmdor?"

"I presume _you_ did."

Wiegraf looked as though he was about to laugh again for a moment; instead, he gazed blankly at Zalbag, as though he were trying to look past him—to somewhere beyond the palace walls and the world that enclosed them. "You really are that much of a fool," he said in a monotone.

Zalbag waited for him to continue, and to his frustration he did not. Wiegraf breathed deep for a moment, as though he were about to launch into some tirade, but instead he focused his dark, morose eyes on him, silently staring at him with an expression somewhere between wonderment and accusation. Apparently this room was fated to host a great number of weighty silences today.

"Listen," Zalbag finally said, exasperated. "Are we to discuss the alleged heresies of my siblings, or do you want to revisit a past that is supposed to be dead to the point I can no longer hang you for it? I have an army waiting on me."

Wiegraf shook his head. "I have errands of my own to run," he retorted dismissively. "I’m confident yours can wait as well as mine." He took a breath, trying to regain the former thread of this increasingly strange interview. "Your brother—Ramza—you allege you knew nothing of his attacks upon the Church?"

"That is correct."

"Have you ever suspected him of heresy in the past?"

"I hadn’t seen him in well over a year until today. I cannot speak to his present beliefs. He never struck me as particularly devout or particularly errant before."

"And your sister?"

Zalbag hesitated, realizing anew the full weight of Alma suddenly being somewhere else embroiled in matters over which he had no control. In the midst of all that had happened—was happening—he hadn’t been able to move far beyond his initial shock as to her involvement. It was strange. He had only seen her that morning at breakfast. She had been picking at a quince tart. He remembered now that she had wished him a good day—a thing common enough that he had apparently not marked it, even after all the long months prior when they had endured together in hateful silence.

"I have every trust in the purity Alma’s devotion," he answered. "She spent most of her childhood at Orbonne, and she has never given me any cause to doubt the sincerity of her faith. If Ramza has entangled her in his crimes, I trust her to be conscientious enough to abandon him before she falls victim to whatever poisonous ideology he espouses." Some cruel impulse got the better of him, and he shot Wiegraf a deliberate and venomous look. "Would that all young women might be so wise."

Wiegraf slammed his fist into the table, obviously incensed.

"How about _you_, general?" he asked sharply, raising his voice. "How do you evaluate your own faith?"

"Are you accusing _me_ of heresy now?"

"Are you pretending to be above investigation?"

Zalbag had expected things would turn this way, but it didn’t make the accusation any less disquieting. "I believe any investigation conducted with a genuine aim towards finding the truth would find me to be free of any heterodoxy," he said in as calm a tone he could summon, "let alone heresy."

Wiegraf, very animated by his anger, moved behind the chair in which Zalbag sat, placing his hands on its back as he leaned uncomfortably close to him. There was a sickly tension to the feeling of the man’s breath against his skin, to the fleeting glance of a flyaway blond hair against the side of his face. He closed his eyes a moment as Wiegraf leaned to speak quietly in his ear.

"Is that the extent of it, Beoulve?" His voice dropped to an acerbic whisper. "‘Free of heterodoxy?’ Is that the extent of your beliefs?"

"Which of my beliefs concern you, Templar?"

Wiegraf placed a hand on his shoulder, his fingers brushing the edge of the high necked tunic that covered his throat. "How about your understanding of death?" he said. "Why don’t we start there."

Zalbag tensed, genuinely unnerved by both the question and the sudden and unasked for intimacy of its asker's touch. He stilled the impulse to turn and draw his sword.

"I believe in the separation of body from soul and in the promise that Ajora will lead the latter to Paradise when the former dies," he said, paraphrasing a major article of the Credo.

"I asked for your understanding, General," Wiegraf said icily, "not for your ability to recite the words of others."

"Are you about to kill me, Wiegraf?" Zalbag asked. "Or is there some point to this?"

He could feel the tightening of Wiegraf’s grip along the edge of his neck, pressing the chain of the icon he wore beneath his tunic ever so slightly against his collarbone. He imagined for a moment that he would reach about to throttle him, that the period between Zeakden and now had just been one prolonged pause in a battle still being fought—that they were still caught, suspended in that empty space above the snow.

"Kill you? In the middle of the Lesalian Imperial Palace?" Wiegraf asked, evidently bemused. "Do you really think I’d survive that?"

"I don’t recall your survival being much of a priority the last time you tried to kill me."

"I’d be a greater idiot than you if you were the Beoulve I died killing," he said darkly. "Since we’ve broached the topic, however, let’s frame my question in terms of our last encounter. What did your faith do for you then?"

There were a great number of things that Zalbag wanted to do or say in response, and he chafed to realize that none of them would get him through this charade of an interview any faster. He was bound, by multiple laws, to answer questions asked by somebody acting under the powers of the Inquisition, and every evasion on his part was another delay to getting him to where he was needed.

"I accepted that we’d die," he said very quietly. "Faith, I suppose, made that acceptance easy."

"Easy?"

He took a deep breath. "There is a restfulness that comes from assuming a divine providence. Men are free agents, true, but no man is free from dying, and that..."

He paused a moment to pick his words, conscious of how carefully they were being scrutinized. It was so strange to speak of these things, to give them shape and voice beyond his own private sense of them.

"That makes death, with everything it promises, almost mechanical." He looked down, the hint of an unbidden and unseen smile lighting across his features. "I suppose I find comfort in such machinery."

He could not see Wiegraf’s expression, but there was a long pause before he asked another question.

"Would you say you embrace death then?"

"I am well aware of the injunction against self slaughter, if that’s what you’re asking. An embrace would require impetus on my part, and I think when it comes to God’s devices, it’s clear who is meant to be mover and who moved." He turned his head slightly, but did not look behind him. "I wasn’t the one leaping off a cliff."

"You weren’t."

"What about you, Wiegraf? Would you say you embrace death?"

Wiegraf removed his hand from Zalbag’s shoulder and placed it rigidly on the table. He leaned until he met his gaze.

"I move myself, if that’s what you’re asking," he said firmly. "I imagine your superiors are pleased that you do not."

Zalbag nodded. "I suppose revolutionaries have their own outlook on dying."

"I’m not a revolutionary now," Wiegraf said, not disguising his bitterness. "But I am wont to understand that such men would prefer to die with the promise that their deaths have some meaning beyond their own peace."

Zalbag didn’t say anything further. He looked at Wiegraf intently, making no remark as to the complete non-answers he’d provided to his question. He was not the one, after all, with the right of asking them. They were at such an angle that the sun from the window back-lit his interrogator. The nimbus of his dirty blonde hair glowed gold—something like a painting of Bariaus he had once seen, where the halo was only implied by the scene.

"We’ve covered death well enough, General," Wiegraf continued after a moment. "Why don’t we discuss sin?" He finally backed away from him some degree. "I, for one, am quite content to postpone my other orders for as long as I am permitted to do so, and we have a long afternoon in which to converse." He stood, paced a bit, tried to smile. "Where do you think your sins lie, Beoulve?"

"Is this really necessary?" Zalbag replied coldly. It was evident that it was not and that whether he cooperated or dodged made little difference. Nevertheless, he continued. "What is the point of this farce other than to trouble me? You have barely asked about the actual heretic you’re pursuing despite the fact that I obviously bear him little good will. You haven’t asked where he might be—not that I know. You haven’t asked whether I knew anything about Lionel. You certainly haven’t asked me anything useful about my sister, save to needle me about her in a fashion that I must assume constitutes some dreadfully anemic revenge as regards your own."

Wiegraf, obviously angry, wrenched his fist hard around the hilt of his sword for a moment, but he did nothing foolish. Instead he moved to turn the chair upon which Zalbag sat, until they were face to face and once again uncomfortably close.

"Perhaps your sins _aren’t_ necessary for my investigation," he continued. "I won’t know until I hear them. I am still permitted to ask, and you are still obligated to respond."

"Temple knight, examiner, and _confessor_ now," Zalbag replied flippantly. "You wear a variety of guises today, Wiegraf."

"You know, I think more men of your rank could do with confessors like me. You might benefit from speaking to someone eager to fully condemn you instead of tripping over himself to absolve you each Sabbath."

"Fine, what do you wish to know?"

"Name me whichever sin it is that might disrupt your ‘comfort’ as you call it. If you’re so acclimated to being moved by heaven, humor me, and show the same obedience to her representative."

Zalbag looked at him again, overcome with a silent and carefully contained loathing as he thought through all the lapses he so little wished this man to know. Were he a different person, he would lie. He would tell himself that Wiegraf was no legitimate Templar, that his request held no legitimate Church authority, and that whatever transgression there was in lying to a corrupted cleric might be easily be forgiven through the auspices of the genuine sacrament. He was certain that no man—present company excluded—would condemn him for that reasoning.

And yet, he was no person other than himself. He condemned such reasoning, and for all he knew Wiegraf should rightly be no Templar, the judgment of that was not his. How often had he been assured of his own absolution by men clearly concerned more with his name than with his soul? Did he stand outside of grace for their vanities? Was he to judge Wiegraf’s feigned devotion as more invalidating than their laxity? Requiring the infallibility of clergy was itself heresy, and he thought to those early schismatics in the days just after Yudora’s fall, whose obsessions with their brothers’ impurities led to their orders’ collapse. Were he an Examiner himself, he knew how he would rule.

"I’m waiting..." Wiegraf began impatiently.

Thoughts pursued him unbidden: a litany of sins confessed but never extinguished. There was smoke rising from the vales outside Viura, the feel of his bloodied mouth contorting into unvoiced blasphemies, the sound of a crossbow bolt snapped into space and never to be recalled—every crime he had counted and reckoned in its degree. He gazed into Wiegraf’s eyes, thinking of the expression that had been infinitely mirrored between them on that winter’s day when they both fell.

"Beoulve" Wiegraf continued, not flinching from his stare. "I asked you a—"

"Lust," he said icily, cutting him off.

"Lust?"

It was the correct answer, but evidently not the one he had been anticipating. Wiegraf looked away a moment as if to compose his thoughts. "With all you and your House and your order do and have done, that is the sin you confess to?"

"It’s the one I’m least at peace with," Zalbag replied honestly.

"I see." It was clear he did not. "And who suffers for your lust?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody?"

"Nobody save myself."

Wiegraf looked ill at ease for someone not spending the afternoon being interrogated and menaced. Zalbag did his utmost to remain serene, however little he felt it. He had resigned himself to the delay and all the bloodshed that would come with it. The mortification he presently faced was of comparatively little consequence.

"I suppose this is how nobles view their sins," Wiegraf said, regaining some of his stride and all of his scorn. "You scatter corpses like hayseed for years, rob men of their pay, hang those who object, and what truly rankles you is some unspoken perversity that sickens nothing but your own selfish sense of purity." A thought suddenly occurred to him. "Does it even do that?" he continued. "You sound like another self-abasing courtier keen to humiliate himself over some woman he’s never addressed outside of a couplet. Perhaps this sin is all some grand romance to you? So, who is she who never suffers?"

"Wiegraf," Zalbag replied in as emotionless a tone as he could muster, "there is no woman whom my sins touch upon."

Wiegraf finally backed away some small space as he presumably understood. The dust motes caught in the sunlight between them seemed to hang still in the air, and Zalbag wondered at how differently it did feel to admit such things—even veiled as they were—to somebody eager to condemn him.

"and who—?"

"There is no who. There never has been. A layman’s call to celibacy, I suppose."

Wiegraf hesitated again, his handsome features registering surprise more than disgust. Zalbag felt rather certain this wasn’t the conversation he had prepared for. He waited, humiliated, for something by the way of actual acknowledgment or condemnation. It did not come.

"Do you have any other questions for me, Templar?" Zalbag asked firmly after a span, breaking the silence before it could take further root.

Wiegraf clearly did not, but that did not prevent him from finding more to ask. They discussed the case of his brother and sister at some length, although it soon became clear that there was nothing significant he knew and that Wiegraf would move nowhere with any new line of inquiry. Circling round the same half dozen questions, neither brought up anything smacking of theology again. When the door finally swung open, the interruption seemed a relief to them both.

"Templar Folles." A purple-hooded member of Wiegraf’s order addressed him. "My son tells me that you’ve been speaking to the general at some length. I was coming to let you know that Lord Beoulve has recently arrived in the capital and seems better positioned to address some of our inquiries than his brother."

"Am I free to be on my way then?" Zalbag asked in a manner he hoped didn’t betray the full extent of his disquiet.

The man in purple did not answer, but instead unhooded and turned to look at him. He was some years older than Wiegraf, having already begun to grey, and he carried himself with a sense of overconfident authority that he imagined Dycedarg would have more than one thing to say about later.

"General Beoulve," he said, finally addressing him. "An honor. I am Vormav Tengille."

"The head of the Temple Knights?"

"The same."

Zalbag stood.

"Then I suppose you would know," he continued firmly, "when precisely I might leave for Dogoula."

Vormav smiled. "I’m sure I will have an answer for you in the morning, General," he said in a tone that spoke to his complete disregard for whatever might be occurring on the northern front. "I’ll let you know as soon as I am able."

Wiegraf turned to Zalbag as he stood up to leave, but said nothing. He joined Vormav, who made a goodbye for both of them, informing him that the Church thanked him for his cooperation.

Finally alone, he did not sit down. Now that he was caught in an instant where he could contemplate everything that had occurred and every way in which he had mismanaged it, the thought of moving even a hairsbreadth seemed momentarily beyond him.

He only let his despair hold him a few moments. As he walked into the long stone hall that overlooked the palace courtyard, he began to rehearse any number of things to say to the War Council by way of explanation. He tried not to think of Wiegraf, although for a moment he bitterly reflected that he owed him some scant thanks, having given him ample work with which to distract himself.


	3. Chapter 3

Wiegraf had expected that morning that he was going to be riding for Orbonne as soon as it was feasible to do so. It was only slightly before midday that he was told that he had to spend the afternoon harassing Zalbag Beoulve. It was now, late in the afternoon, marching alongside Izlude giving father an account of the Council’s bickering, that he was coming to the full realization of how much he hated the Templarate.

He did, most assuredly, hate every member of House Beoulve a great deal more, and his prolonged conversation with Zalbag had certainly not altered his sentiments in that regard. However, being reduced to the humiliating position of dealing with him through writs and scripture instead of at sword point rankled him. He had no need to bear witness to the corrosive purity of one of the city’s few honest aristocrats. He had no need of being confronted with the stupid reality that some fool who genuinely believed his foolishness noble had massacred nearly every member of his former company. He certainly had no need to hear that for all the blighted lives dwindled away in the plague swept villages and bloody fields of Gallione, what discomfited the leader of the Northern Sky most were middling sins of the flesh never actually committed.

He remained silent as they left the palace and made their way into the streets of the capital, paying little attention to whatever it was that Izlude was relaying. The crowds around them thickened as they pressed through the commercial districts, and Wiegraf was momentarily reminded of the vast throngs of refugees they had passed as they first rode into the city. Famine and pestilence seemed poised to pile up bodies across the eastern duchies faster than any army could if the war dragged on much longer.

And here he was, walking through the streets with coin in his purse and food in his belly, doing his best to prolong it. He tried, as best he could, to reckon the moral arithmetic with the same confidence as his companions, but he grew increasingly resigned to the thought that the greatest good he would wrest from this conflict would be that a scant few deserving men would be among those made wretched.

He tried not to dwell on it. Tracing the twin arms of the wrought iron icon he wore over his tabard, he tossed a hundred gil piece to a beggar as they marched back to the city’s great cathedral, not turning see how it was received. Once they’d finally gotten to ground under Murond’s jurisdiction and away from the prying eyes of the lesser clergy, Vormav pressed him for the details of his interview.

Wiegraf explained what he thought it necessary to explain: that Zalbag Beoulve seemed to be largely ignorant regarding his younger brother, wholly ignorant regarding his elder brother, and single-mindedly eager to get to Dogoula.

He sensed very quickly that Vormav did not believe that this was all that had been discussed and was both surprised and suspicious when he accepted his report without questioning.

"Be ready to ride tomorrow," he said, pressing a hand on Wiegraf’s shoulder. "We shouldn’t need more than a few more days’ delay, and I think my talks with the general’s brother should get us where we need to be."

"So, we weren’t actually taking over for the Examiners?" Wiegraf asked, arm tensing where Vormav touched it. "This was, in fact, all about wasting time?"

"Don’t think of it as time wasted, Wiegraf. To let Orlandu and Beoulve at each other’s throats at this point might bring things to a premature close—one of them falling too soon would tip the balance enough that somebody might capitulate. The Church cannot very well intervene if this war lasts less than a summer."

"I see." Wiegraf smiled politely, nodding as if he understood. It was the sort of thing Izlude seemed to do all the time, although it doubtlessly came from a place of greater sincerity.

Vormav returned the smile, patting his shoulder as he released it. "Only a few days, Folles. I have it on good authority that the Thundergod will find himself recalled to Bethla before the week is out."

He turned to leave, and with a paternal condescension that only befitted one of them, advised that they make their evening prayers quick and get what rest they needed for the journey tomorrow. Izlude, who had been hovering about the room somewhat listlessly once he realized that Wiegraf had nothing particularly interesting he was going to disclose, assured his father that he would.

It was shortly after Vormav left that Wiegraf announced he was going to take a walk to clear his head. Izlude, who seemed to be neither on the verge of prayer or sleep, waved him off with a gesture of approving acknowledgement as he proceeded to pull out a book from his satchel.

Stepping an adjoining room, Wiegraf removed his armor and donned a slightly less impractical uniform, having no further need to make state appearances and counting it unlikely that he’d encounter anything within the church grounds that would necessitate him trudging about in partial plate. Once outside of the chambers that had been set aside for them in the cloisters, he paced about for a while before making his way to the cathedral proper. Unable to give vent to his rage anywhere else, he might as cast it before God. The bastard certainly had a right to it. He stepped into the mostly vacant nave just as the sunset began to catch the large roseate window, projecting the lead-rimmed outline of Saint Ajora’s features onto his own face.

He walked to the pews nearest the altar and knelt as if in prayer, clasping his palm around the icon he wore as if to crush it. He did not offer up any supplications for anyone in the conflict he was helping to orchestrate, but he thought on them—whomever the ragged, starving infantry were this time. He thought on their wretchedness and of the wretchedness of all who had made them thus, considering how little worthy his prayers would be on their behalf and how little worthy any God watching over it all was to receive them.

He spent more time than he cared to wallowing in such thoughts, knowing them to be as self-indulgent as they were useless. These shadows of prayers did nothing, and he had to hope—to pretend at least—that someday he would do more. The sky was moving from gold to red when he stood up from his reverie, ready to depart for some place else. Rising, he caught sight of a cloaked figure walking towards him with obvious purpose.

"Wiegraf Folles," said a tired and now familiar voice, "I need a word with you."

Drawing near, he soon saw whom it was who approached him. Zalbag looked somehow both more composed and more exhausted than he had been a few hours prior. He too had changed out of the largely ceremonial half-armor he wore. Given the cloak, Wiegraf assumed that he had not wanted to broadcast his presence.

"What do you need to say, General Beoulve?"

Zalbag looked at him grimly. "It concerns your status in the Templarate."

"Oh?"

"I wish to contest the Church’s claim on you."

Wiegraf looked around him, not entirely sure what he meant but fairly certain that this was not a conversation he wanted to have on Glabados property.

"The church we stand in has no claim on me, at least," he whispered, leaning in close to Zalbag’s face for a moment. "Shall we walk? I was just about to leave."

He began to do so, striding as confidently and quickly as he could towards the cathedral’s half-opened double doors such that Zalbag had to hasten to keep up. He had no real plan of action, and he recognized the foolishness of leading a man he very much wanted to murder on some unpremeditated jaunt through the city. However, even with Vormav absent, he recognized that whatever they were about to discuss might make his life considerably more troublesome if it were spoken of within earshot of the wrong cleric.

Zalbag didn’t say anything as they walked away from any sight of holy ground and into the maze of streets that ran through the heart of the capital. As they passed by lamp lit rows of closing shops and opening bars, he seemed to keep his eyes perpetually fixed on Wiegraf, as though he were waiting for him to continue the conversation he had begun.

"Do you want to explain what you meant about the Church?" he finally asked after they’d gone on a while and he was relatively certain nobody had followed them.

"Do you want to discuss it in the open streets?" Zalbag asked calmly.

Wiegraf considered it a moment, and turned sharply into a nearby inn—something with a boar on the shingle. Zalbag followed, and within the span of time it took to trade coin for keys, they found themselves alone in a room together for the second time that day.

"Will you explain yourself now?" Wiegraf asked brusquely, glancing through the door as he closed and bolted it.

"I don’t know who you may fear might overhear, Wiegraf, but I’m fine discussing the matter anywhere," Zalbag said coldly, looking out the window. "The truth of the matter is that you’re not a Templar."

"Oh?"

He turned to face him. "You’re right about the Concordat of 1134, but I did some checking up. I believe you’d remember from your vows that the Knights of the Temple accept no initiates who are presently a part of another order. Murond and the Crown have been in agreement on that for a while."

"Pardon me if I don’t quite see how that applies."

"When did you stop being a member of the Death Knights, Wiegraf?" Zalbag asked.

Wiegraf’s eyes narrowed. "We were disbanded."

"Did you actually disband?"

He thought of all the hills between Zeakden and whatever hole he’d managed to hide in that night, remembering the fading shouts of his men as he’d ran, bloody and breathless, into the snow. When he made his way back east, days later, it was as though the battle had never been. A sympathetic farmer who sheltered him for a span told him that the bodies had been piled like cordwood and hauled to the blazing fortress in the name of expediency. It had been impractical to bury the dead in the frozen ground.

He looked Zalbag firmly in the eyes. "No," he said with obvious emotion. "I suppose we did not."

"Did you accept the articles calling for the unit’s dissolution."

"I recall that I did not do that either."

"There are, in fact, witnesses who will attest that you tore them to shreds and shouted that the Council could choke on them."

Wiegraf nodded. He had him on that count.

"As such, you are still technically a member of the Knights of Death, and your first fealty is to the Crown. As Lesalia’s true heir is presently supported directly by the Hokuten…"

"Did Dycedarg write this all down for you?" Wiegraf asked, cutting him off.

Zalbag stared at him for a moment, clearly frustrated, but he did not respond. Taking that as his answer, Wiegraf continued.

"Let’s be more succinct, Beoulve. The claim is that you’re my commander."

"That’s the claim, yes," Zalbag replied.

"What is this leading up to?"

"It’s something I want you to consider before you..."

"Before I do what? Do you really think doing anything to me will change the Church’s position on your damn brother?"

"This isn’t about my family," he said with an angry indignation that Wiegraf wholly believed to be sincere. "Whatever I might feel about the matter, I cede to the Church the treatment of heretics."

"Then you accept..."

"I accept that not everyone will be saved. I have always accepted that. Unlike you, I trust that there is some order according to which the world is set, and I don’t try to upend that whenever it suits my wishes. If I did…" He took a sharp breath as he clenched his fists. "I consider the totality of lives for which I’m responsible, Wiegraf. I think about who ends up dead when I abandon the obligations of my station."

"You do now?" Wiegraf asked mockingly, thoughts drifting his own tallies to this end. "You think on the dead? Weren’t we just talking about the romance you find in dying… among other things? Those poor doomed youths whose flesh only goes to crows, _how_ do you think on them?"

Zalbag moved towards him, obviously upset.

"I’m bound for Dogoula in the morning," he said in an icy voice that would brook no contradiction. "I will not be delayed again."

"Are trying to give me an order?" Wiegraf hissed.

"Yes."

Wiegraf considered how easy it should be in this place to slit a man’s throat and not have him be found until morning, when he’d be miles away and Vormav could sort out the damage done to their plans on his own. He dropped a hand to brush what should be the pommel of his sword, and realized that he’d left it in the cloisters. Looking at Zalbag, he wondered at why it angered him that the man might thwart him over this. He had no love for this war or for the Church’s plans to extend it.

He wondered at a lot of things, at the decisions he had made that led him to this room and this conversation and this burning awareness of his own hypocrisy. He hated Zalbag more for that for anything else: for not being a hypocrite. Wiegraf could no longer afford the luxuries of moral superiority, and it galled him that some fool who had never been wretched in his powerlessness should stand here, lecturing him on duty and obligation and all the pretty things in which he could afford to believe.

"An order, commander?" He heard himself begin to speak words that seemed to come to him unbidden. He stepped nearer to him, near enough for it to be uncomfortable to both of them. He felt the cool steady rhythm of the man’s breath on his skin for a moment as he leaned in to whisper in his ear, just as he had earlier in the day when he tried to rattle him. "Do you know the sort of orders my first commander gave me?"

Zalbag did not respond to his question, did not say anything to acknowledge or condemn Wiegraf's own unfolding confession—equally veiled and equally meaningless as his own. For a moment, Wiegraf wondered if it had chafed him that morning that to hear a man claim the burden of sins he himself had committed in what was apparently much greater excess. He looked at him and considered that it might well be a matter of opportunity, that men were much more cautious in corrupting the sons of generals than they were the sons of blacksmiths.

He took a deep breath, thinking as to how well the slender, auburn-haired boy he imagined Zalbag must have been would have fared in the thick of a commoner’s volunteer army. Would lust grieve him as much when he couldn’t decline it? He ran his hand along the man’s arm, and noted that Zalbag didn’t stop him.

"A fresh and hale youth like myself, reared in the heathen ignorance of the countryside," he continued, wondering what the hell he was doing. "Do you think anyone in that ragged militia of peasant boys felt a call to celibacy?"

Zalbag remained motionless, but it wasn’t lost on Wiegraf that he breathed both deeper and faster. He moved to meet his gaze, and as he brought his ungloved hand his man’s face, his brain was alight with thoughts more voluptuous and hateful than murder. Zalbag trembled, and looking to him with an obvious and expectant shame, said nothing.

He drew him into a violent kiss, and resting his other hand on his throat, tumbled them both into the infinite space of a white counterpane atop the room’s single bed.

Truth be told—Wiegraf was very bad at kissing. His various youthful experiments in sin had not been terribly romantic: the aforementioned commander, scarcely less a boy than himself; the full-figured butcher’s daughter who dragged him from his father’s forge to her father’s barn one afternoon; the myriad one-night encounters a man enjoyed thinking he and his unit might die the next day. As the war had worn on, he had found himself largely unmoved in matters of the flesh. His eventual lack of coin and abundance of ideals had no doubt contributed.

It was fortunate for him that Zalbag was one of the few men who would not notice his deficiencies. He met his kisses with equal incompetence; everything was aggressive and coarse and involved far too many teeth. They were both men far more accustomed to fighting than lovemaking.

He disentangled himself a moment, catching his breath as he stood and began to disrobe. Zalbag sat up, flustered and looking as if he might protest. He did not. He watched as Wiegraf stripped off his shirt and tabard, moved back to sit next to him, loosed the clasp of his own cloak. His eyes only moved from the other man’s body when he undid the hasp of his wrought iron icon and let it clatter to the floor.

"Look at me," Wiegraf ordered, turning Zalbag’s face back to meet his own.

He did. Wiegraf delivered another graceless kiss, which Zalbag requited with equal ineptitude and equal enthusiasm. When next they parted, he roughly pulled the fitted tunic over Zalbag's head and off his body. It surprised him little to find that the man wore an icon of his own beneath his clothing; it surprised him more that Zalbag should remove it unbidden.

He pressed him down onto the narrow bed and climbed atop him, thinking all the time of the rank stupidity of what he was doing. In the midst of their caresses, there were so many instants of absolute nothing—the flash of his throat as he breathed, the racing pulse that beat somewhere within his pinned wrist—that left Wiegraf painfully conscious of how suddenly vibrant and vulnerable Zalbag was. He hated him anew for it; for daring to be so alive in this instant when others were not. He hated many things: the old war, the new war, the city, the church, the state, the garish red cloth that lay crumpled on the floorboards. He hated most profoundly though, that in the moment he should want something more of Zalbag than to destroy him, and in the midst of their embrace he pushed away suddenly as that realization stung him.

Zalbag looked up, and it disgusted Wiegraf to see that same intermingling of rage, shame, and desire playing across his features. Lowering his gaze, he noticed, for the first time in dim light, just how extensive the pale scars were that overspread his thin, wiry body—even more extensive than his own.

He touched one hesitantly and noticed how it had feathered at the edges. Zalbag seemed to still his breath a moment, but said nothing. The ragged lines at the edge of the old wound—they were the sort of thing that apparently developed when you'd been dragged to a professional too many times. The magic burnt into the small veins in the skin or some such thing. It was a complication Wiegraf had never had to face, having seldom had access to more magic than an improvised poultice and a stiff glass of brandy when he'd been injured.

He looked at Zalbag again and pretended that he saw a sympathy in him doubtlessly not present: that it meant something for their bodies to have the same history—decades of capitulations and failed treaties writ in flesh. He ran a finger along the lines of former injuries, tracing an aimless path across his chest.

"Any of these mine?" he asked quietly.

"I wouldn't know," Zalbag said, speaking for the first time since Wiegraf had started on this course. A sudden awkwardness made him seem much younger than he actually was. "I had a lot to manage after Zeakden, and you were far from the only man I fought." He took Wiegraf's hand and moved it to the left, where it rested over the ridges of his lower ribs. "If there's anything, it would be here."

Wiegraf nodded for a moment and then, removing his hand, kissed the spot in question very suddenly and very intensely. Zalbag made only a very muted gasp as he wrenched his fingers painfully into his hair. He lingered there for a long moment, thinking that if he hadn't left a mark before, he'd damned well better leave one now. After a few moments, he trailed other kisses along other scars, noticing very pointedly that as Zalbag clung to him, his free hand grazed the side of his shoulder, where he'd only touched him before through the intermediary of a blade.

The act provoked and inflamed him. Violently, Wiegraf continued to press his lips and tongue against Zalbag’s angular frame, leaving welts he hoped might bruise to black by morning. When his face reached the edge of the man’s trousers, he wasted little time in unlacing them, tugging them roughly down until he had his prick in hand—rigid and inflamed as the rest of him. A stifled noise died on his lips as Wiegraf began to stroke him, disentangling Zalbag’s hand from his hair as he sat up and drew very close to him.

"Wiegraf," Zalbag said, "This is..."

"This is a mortal sin," Wiegraf whispered venomously. "Seven years penance if they don’t hang you at the end of your march through the streets in sackcloth." He kept stroking him, fist balled tight around his erection as he began to undo his own pants.

Zalbag said nothing, did nothing, closed his eyes and let himself be toyed with as Wiegraf brought them prick to prick, stroking them both as they sweated and rutted like animals. He kissed Zalbag again, biting his lip roughly as he thought how bittersweet an enjoyment it was to wrench a man from his ideals—to degrade him as he had been degraded.

There was the bite of Zalbag’s fingernails in his skin, the heat of his drenched body bucking against his, the scent of that last lingering kiss of the cathedral’s incense coming off their bodies. They stopped, stripped themselves stark, pressed together again. Over and over, Wiegraf told himself this was a revenge—the poorest he could afford—until he told himself nothing, his thoughts losing their way in the midst of their entangled bodies.

In the mindless progress of their lust, his hate slipped from him. He hadn’t room to think on anything but the immediate particulars of the act, and in that moment he drifted without tragedy or despair. All things moved as they ought. Each contour of his body seemed suddenly fitted to the one beneath him, and he did not desire anything more than to cling a while to what he had.

Unthinking, he reached out to touch Zalbag’s face with an unintended tenderness, and immediately felt him tense, wrapping his limbs hard around him. He wrenched Wiegraf against him, committing the most mundane of blasphemies as he breathlessly invoked God again and again.

He came abruptly, and buried his face in the crook of Wiegraf’s collarbone. In the handful of seconds where they remained still, Wiegraf could feel him take a single convulsive breath, digging the stubble of his hot face into his skin.

Wiegraf pushed him back forcefully onto the bed, rage and resentment finding him again. He brought himself half-upright and tried in his desperate frenzy to also work himself to orgasm. It took far longer than he wished. Zalbag, spent, didn’t look at him, wincing slightly as Wiegraf spilled onto his already sweat-soaked chest. His mortification, now that the act was complete, was abundantly apparent.

Wiegraf, for his part, was not much better off. He stood up and went to gather his things, trying not to look to where Zalbag lay unmoving. He moved as though he were caught in a dream or stupor, time always a few paces out of step with where he wanted to be. His hands found his cast off garments. He felt himself dress. As soon as he was presentable enough to leave, he moved to do so, stopping a moment at the door to finally address his collapsed lover.

"Think of this next time you look to heaven."

He hoped to have some satisfaction from that—hoped to be cruel and cutting. He only felt the sting of his own worthlessness. Zalbag neither responded or met his gaze, staring off into whatever sky lay above the ceiling, and he did not tarry longer waiting for a reaction.

He walked briskly, and out on the street again, he trembled, heart racing as he thought a great many sick and bitter things. Some blocks later, as he reached instinctively to trace the icon he was accustomed to wearing, he realized that it was not his own.

He stopped, looked at a sky still not yet black, and leaned against the cool brick of a shop wall. Blinking upward, he was grateful when he realized that it would rain.


	4. Epilogue

Zalbag stepped into a drizzling mist. He had slept a handful of hours in that room, in that bed, face pressed against sheets damp with their mingled sweat. It had felt like nothing at the time. As he walked the winding city streets in what he thought was the direction of the palace, it was as though he were still afloat in that moment of culminating abasement.

_Think of this next time you look to heaven._

Wiegraf had left him with that, barely looking to where he’d lain naked and spent. It was effective. It was the sort of melodramatic, patronizing thing a man in love with his own speeches would say, the sort of thing he should have anticipated—of course it was effective.

He closed his eyes, shuddering at the weight and substance of his own body. All those years of piety and solitude, and it had taken an unhanged criminal less than fifteen minutes of whispering in his ear for him to fall. If he could dissolve, if he could sublimate his corrupt flesh into the unmoving air, he would have done so. Instead, he moved on, thinking of every jolting instant where he’d felt the touch of somebody’s skin against his skin, of all those points of contact between their two bodies and how he’d suddenly been in the real presence of something other than himself and God. More than the memory of Wiegraf’s lips on his, of all their frenzied lust and rank carnality, he was haunted to think of the mundane realities of being so suddenly unalone.

Once returned, he lost no time in heading for Dogoula—and as promised, he did not wait for the permission of the Church. The sun was barely in the sky when he departed, flying down the straw-colored hills that stretched toward Mount Langria. With the battlefield ahead and the threat of death once more immediate, he could almost imagine the night before had been some fevered imagining of his: a dream that would invariably fade into day.

In the long weeks that followed, however, as they strove desperately to press the Nanten back, he remained tethered to it, the constant weight of a wrought iron icon not his own pressing cold against his chest. With that relic of his iniquity, Wiegraf did not leave him, some element of him ineffably transmuted to matter as when pilgrims laid their clothing on the tombs of saints. He found no peace in prayer, for all he prayed often, and he threw himself into combat with feverish recklessness.

Word had spread to Dorter regarding him by the time that Wiegraf and Izlude arrived there, and they could not help but overhear talk amidst the bustling merchants of the fury the Northern Sky, whose commander blazed towards Zeltennia like an ill-omened comet. Neither of them commented upon such talk, but at one point Wiegraf, upon hearing General Beoulve’s name mentioned in the midst of tavern small talk, unconsciously traced the filigreed lines of the gold icon he wore over his tabard.

"Where did you pick that up?" Izlude asked curiously, noticing the article for the first time. "It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that would suit you."

"It isn’t," Wiegraf replied tersely.

"It didn’t cost you too much, did it?"

Wiegraf wrapped it in his palm a moment, thinking as to how easily he could make a wreck of it should he grip it tight. It felt heavier in his hand than it looked.

"Let’s move on," he said, declining to answer Izlude's question. "Our business is with costlier baubles than this, after all."

**Author's Note:**

> **Image Credit:** Icons made in the shape of the Glabados icon as pictured [here](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/1/1c/GlabadosSymbol.gif/revision/latest?cb=20071229223444); [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/vectors/knot-knots-rope-sail-nautical-312006/) ([CC0 1.0](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/)); [publicdomainvectors.org](https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Freestanding-cross/78889.html) ([CC0 1.0](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/))
> 
> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.
> 
> This prologue was originally a ficlet written for the FFA prompt "100 Words of Fireworks."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Post Nubila Phoebus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24796663) by [Jaydee_Faire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydee_Faire/pseuds/Jaydee_Faire)


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